


Trespass Offering

by sonicSymphony



Series: Terrestrial Trolling [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Humanstuck, Occult, Panic Attacks, Urban Exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-06-04 23:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6680203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonicSymphony/pseuds/sonicSymphony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein the group of insane fuckwits who make up the urban exploration blog Terrestrial Trolling finally converge in real life. Though Eridan really wishes it were just to hang out, a ritual in the past made it clear that they must perform an even <em>bigger</em> ritual now in order to save some alien kids that are stuck between universes, plus make it so the work of one of those kids wasn't in vain.</p><p>Or, in summary: A meeting in life, a meeting in dreams, and a meeting of Gods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Memo

**Author's Note:**

> If this is the first you're seeing of Terrestrial Trolling: you could probably start here! The first two installments are somewhat prequel-y, and between the two, the second is much more important than the first. But even if you don't choose to go back, I think you'll be fine!
> 
> To those of you who have been with Terrestrial Trolling for a while, you know this is my experimental series, mostly in regards to humor and horror. (I will warn you, though, this one isn't that funny. I try a little bit, but not a lot.) However, with this one, I'm experimenting with formatting more than anything, so you should definitely tell me how the choppiness and different narrative styles affected the flow! The longest, middle chapter will definitely be in the style most familiar to you all, but the rest are sort of different. The main difference, as you can see, is that this is a multichapter fic! Despite that, I still consider it a oneshot, because I am posting all of it at once. (Man, don't you wish I could do that for my _other_ stuff? Haha. Ha.) This will be the third of four stories in the Terrestrial Trolling universe, and I will get to the final installment whenever I damn well feel like it!
> 
> Either way, this third part is definitely the most self-contained out of all of them, in terms of a real plot. No Tresspassing is pretty self-contained too (seeing as it was supposed to be a oneshot and not part of a series, lmao) but it isn't a huge part of the actual _story_. This is the most plot-oriented of all of the parts of the Terrestrial Trolling series, and I hope it works out!
> 
> Enjoy!

carcinoGeneticist [CG] opened memo on board TERRESTRIAL TROLLING.

CG: OKAY, ERIDAN. TRY TO EXPLAIN THE HOUSE THING AGAIN, WHILE WE’RE ALL HERE  
caligulasAquarium [CA] responded to memo.  
CA: so theres this house effigy thats popped up in each one a our pictures once  
CA: or at least once that i saww  
CA: i just got a shot a it wwhen i wwas in the hell house the other day  
CA: terrestrialtrolling.tumblr.com/post/savannah-ga-hell-house-blood  
arsenicCatnip [AC] responded to memo.  
AC: :33 < *ac inquires whether or not the blood is furreal*  
CA: god nep did you evven read my fuckin post  
CA: yeah its pretty damn real  
CA: it wwas drippin from the ceiling too  
apocalypseArisen [AA]  responded to memo.  
AA: pr0bably the w0rk 0f that malev0lent spirit y0u were telling me ab0ut  
CG: THE FUCK ERIDAN  
CG: HAVE ARADIA AND FEFERI PULLED YOU BY YOUR DORKY SUSPENDERS INTO THE WORLD OF THE FAKE AS SHIT OCCULT  
CA: kar i swwear to god that i wwouldnt be so focused on this if i kneww evverythin about this place wwas normal  
CA: its not and i feel lucky to be alivve  
AA: even with that busted ankle 0f y0urs?  
AA: th0ugh i did tune 0ut m0st 0f y0ur emergency r00m lamenting, y0u didn’t s0und very happy t0 be alive then  
CA: the feelin wwore off noww that it doesnt hurt like hell anymore  
CA: but ANYWWAY back to the house thing  
CA: terrestrialtrolling.tumblr.com/post/tokyo-subway-pics  
CA: terrestrialtrolling.tumblr.com/post/tree-stump-carvings  
CA: terrestrialtrolling.tumblr.com/post/karkats-miscellaneous-clusterfuck  
CA: its in all a those look  
CG: OKAY. I SEE THE HOUSE.  
CG: SO?  
CA: i tried lookin for it evverywwhere else on the internet and i couldnt find a fuckin remnant a somethin similar  
AA: i l00ked t00 when eridan first t0ld me ab0ut it and i c0uldnt find anything either  
CA: dont you guys think its a little wweird that this symbol is in the most random places all ovver the fuckin wworld  
AA: n0t rand0m!  
AA: places that all 0f us f0und  
AA: were whats tying all 0f this t0gether  
AC: :00 < ooh this so interesting! do you think its a sign that were supposed to m33t someday? i really want to s33 you all in purrson!  
AA: thats exactly what i think it means nepeta  
AA: its time


	2. Dream State

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "To die, to sleep; to sleep, perchance to dream; aye, there's the rub." --William Shakespeare, _Hamlet_

“Hello, my dear.”

“Am I still dreaming?”

“Yes and no.”

“That’s not possible, I am or I’m not.”

“Anything is possible here.”

“So I _am_ dreaming.”

“If you like to think you are, sure.”

“So, what are you doing in my dream? …That’s kind of a funny question. I’m normally not a lucid dreamer.”

“No, you’re a Prospit dreamer.”

“What? Why was that amusing?”

“I apologize, it’s a private joke. My name is Rose.”

 

* * *

 

“Oh, it’s you again.”

“Yes, me. You don’t sound pleased.”

“Most of the characters in my dreams are one-offs. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

“Now _that_ sounded an iota more pleased.”

“I couldn’t help it. Despite my confusion at this sudden bout of lucid dreaming, I find you easy to talk to.”

“That’s good. I enjoy talking to you as well, Kanaya. How old are you?”

“Sixteen. And you?”

“Six.”

“My, you seem much older than _six_!”

“Well, I guess you could also say that I am an eternity.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“This is _your_ dream, so you said. If you still think that, then it is your mind making up this strangeness.”

 

* * *

 

“A _God_?”

“Yes.”

“ _You_?”

“Yes.”

“Impossible.”

“I _have_ been communicating with you through dreams for a rather long time.”

“Yes, but… I just thought you were another piece of me.”

“No, Kanaya. I’m my own person.”

“Oh… Well, I guess that’s a bit relieving. I didn’t think I was narcissistic enough to have a crush on myself.”

 

* * *

 

“You’re never going to go away, are you?”

“You sound sad at the prospect.”

“Well… I am. It’s been four years, I’ve grown rather fond of you. When I’m awake it feels sort of _mad_ that I come to talk to you so often when I sleep, but I’ve grown used to it.”

“Kanaya?”

“Yes?”

“You’re not mad. Do you want me to prove it to you?”

“How?”

“There’s a way that you can bring me forth into this world.”

 

* * *

 

“Please.”

“No.”

“ _Please,_ Kanaya.”

“No. I don’t believe you are a god. For what you want me to do, you _must_ be a demon.”

“Grimdarkness is the most powerful magic in place in your universe. It’s hard to harness, and it _can_ bring demons. But I am not one of them.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“…”

“But I want to.”


	3. The First Ritual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Feferi Peixes performs a ritual involving a dead girl, and Eridan Ampora forces himself to watch.

“You don’t have to be here,” Fef says for the six millionth time.

For the first five million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine times, you thought it was because she could smell the reek of fear on you and could see every bit of you trembling. You _hate_ occult magic. You hate the odd pressure you get behind your eyes whenever she chants, you hate the low light, you hate how unperturbed she seems as cold sweat glides down your back. But now, as you consider her words one more time, you think that _maybe_ she’s giving you an out because your aura will fuck up her ritual.

But no. You couldn’t fuck this up by just sitting here, that’s silly. If Fef really _needed_ you to leave, she’d make you.

“Guppy, you look terrified,” she says softly. She knows better than to lean across what she’s made in the center between the two of you—the candles, the sprig of rosemary, the photo of the dead Other, the little ring of blood—so she goes around the side, reaching for you with a hand that has just had a splint removed off its ring finger. She’s still tentative with that hand, but she says she has full control of it now; that’s what she’d been waiting for before doing the ritual. Well, that and your leg—while you’re still in a cast, it’s a walking boot now, and you’ve been without crutches for almost a week. Balancing on two metal poles while your ankle was still tender made you clumsy as hell, but now you think you could book it at a reasonable pace if you needed to. Fef continues, “I really _can_ do this by myself.”

Just like she said she could’ve gone into that fucking _house_ by herself. Ha ha, no way, you know it’s better to have a completed circle and that requires at least two people. Steeling yourself, you sit up straight, your lips set in a grim line. “You’re not doing this without me.” _I’m more afraid for you than I am for myself._

For years, you thought there would never be a time when you cared for someone more than you did for yourself, because you were the greatest and you didn’t want the world to have to suffer the indignity of being void of you, but then you had to be an idiot who fell in love, and now there is one person whose life matters more than yours.

 _Much more,_ you admit almost sadly. Fef is worth a thousand of you.

Finally, she lets it rest. “Okay. I’m going to start now.”

The cleansing begins with her lighting the sprig of rosemary on fire, using the candle that was lit at midnight. The smoke smells like herbs: the comforting scent of home cooking mixed with marijuana. She puts it in a small glass bowl with the picture in it, then pricks her finger with a pocket knife before tracing the line of blood around it—it’s cow blood that she’d gotten from a butcher shop, painted into the plywood in a much thicker band than the little one she’s creating with her own—and once she’s done a full 360 degrees, you offer her your hand. You let her cut the tip of your middle finger, because you’re cowardly and it would take you much longer to draw up the resolve to slice into your own flesh. It stings like hell and makes your stomach drop but you don’t let yourself react. Mirroring her action, you also trace the line of blood, mingling your own in it. The motion makes you nauseated for some reason.

Then, you and Fef grasp hands, creating an oval and trapping the energy between the two of you as the picture burns. “Leave us,” Fef says clearly. She doesn’t comment about how you’re bleeding onto her wrist even though her own cut has already congealed, and she doesn’t remind you that you’re trembling terribly, like your dog going through a bad thunderstorm.

There’s no crack of lightning or darkening of the flames. The picture and rosemary burn to ashes.

When nothing is left but an unrecognizable smoldering heap, you find you can’t let go of Fef’s hands. This isn’t it, it can’t be _all_ ; you can feel the dark, a shadowy presence breathing down the back of your neck as you take shallow, gulping breaths, gaze fixated on the bowl. Your cut finger stings like mad. Everything else feels so far away.

“Eridan?” Fef whispers, and you flinch violently, clenching your fingers tighter around hers. You can’t let go. You can’t let go.

“Something’s wrong,” you squeak out, even if you can’t identify _what_ is wrong. The darkness around you feels like death, even if the sky has begun to lighten with dawn. The world feels heavy on your shoulders.

You know her gaze is pitying, despite the fact you haven’t looked up from the bowl yet. You feel like something is staring at you from it.

“Darling,” she says, voice all placating, and she doesn’t really call you nicknames unless something’s really wrong—she normally just butchers your name into something she thinks is cute. “I want you to breathe with me, okay, love?”

A sound bursts from you. It might be a laugh. It might be a sob. It might be a demon, trying to speak from your lips. “Something’s w-wrong,” you repeat, your voice shaking just as badly as the rest of you.

“You’re having a panic attack, guppy,” she says like it’s absolute fact, scooting around the plywood awkwardly since you won’t relinquish her hands. She stands, trying to use her closeness as leverage, and you rock a little but refuse to rise with her, leaving her bent in half. “Come on, let’s get away from this.”

“My ankle hurts,” you lie. Your knees are practically knocking together; you don’t think your legs could support your weight. “I don’t w-wanna—” a half-gasp, half-sob interrupts your sentence, “—w-walk on it.”

Sighing, Fef sinks down next to you, finally forcing you to let go of her hands. You feel even worse now, untethered, but she just makes you lie down, your head in her lap. She lightly takes your wrist and raises your hand, pausing to look at you cut finger, which is still trickling dully. “This is deep,” she says sadly. “I didn’t mean to.”

Your reply between short breaths is a hiccup.

After kissing your fingertip, she presses your palm to her breastbone, saying calmly, “Breathe with me. In… Out… In…”

Keeping time with her is a struggle, and it takes a few minutes for you to bring your breathing down to a less frantic rhythm. Though you don’t want to turn your back to the ashes, you find that squeezing your eyes shut helps. Fef removes your glasses, using her free hand to smooth your hair away from your widow’s peak, and even though you’re still shaking and ill, at least you can breathe again. Her hand on your head helps you feel less dizzy.

You float away for a little while, then slowly come to the realization that you’re on the back porch of your townhouse, the plywood with the ritualistic stuff in front of you and a pretty retention pond behind that, and the sun is coming up.

“Want to go inside?” Feferi asks quietly. With a tiny nod, you sit up, then let Fef help you to your feet. You bad ankle doesn’t take your weight at first, like your foot’s asleep, but you shift your weight back and forth a moment until you’re able to walk inside.

Fef closes the sliding glass door. She leads you to the big plushy couch in the living room, opening the blinds as she goes to make the pale room shine in sunlight. As she disappears into the kitchen for a moment, you try to read the seashell clock on the wall; it takes you a second to realize Fef still has your glasses, and that’s why you can only see a vague peach blur on the wall with fuzzy black squiggles inside of it.

“I put on tea,” Fef’s voice says from right behind you, and you’re still on edge so you flinch. “Sorry,” she apologizes, catching the gesture.

Abruptly, you feel like a small child that just got done throwing a temper tantrum and now has to stew in the shame of being immature. Putting your head in your hands and threading your fingers in your hair, you say, “No, stop it. I’m the worst.” You try for a self-deprecating laugh, but it just sounds bitter to your ears. “Sorry. That I. That I keep being a big fuckin’ _baby_.”

This isn’t the first time this has happened. You had meltdowns as a kid, because you were always an overdramatic little bitch, but some had felt different from others. When you’d gone to boarding school at fourteen, you thought it was your homesickness that made you sometimes lock yourself in the bathroom and hyperventilate in the bathtub. On the Easter of your sixteenth year, Fef had caught you curled up in a ball outside the school’s chapel, convinced that things were watching you and whispering to you. (You’d never liked going to church; Mom had begged you to go that day, and you hated disappointing her.) You didn’t remember scratching up your arms, but Fef had yelled at you and made you cry, and it didn’t sink in until after that you weren’t the only one who was scared. She took you to the school counsellor and you started going to therapy; this was the first time you’d heard the term “ _panic disorder_ ”.

You hated the sound of it, but it fit. Your parents let you go on Xanax and you stayed on it until last year, when you were sure you didn’t need it anymore. You felt terrible for about a month after, but you’d pushed yourself through it, and you hoped you’d come out better on the other side. Since dropping Xanax, you’d had six panic attacks, including this one. That’s not too bad, you think.

Fef has other opinions. She takes in your response and self-depreciation and says encouragingly, “I think you should try therapy again.”

“No,” you say flatly. You can’t look at her.

“Well, it _hurt_ you to get off Xanax—”                                                                                                      

 “I don’t want that either.”

It’s silent for a few seconds as she contemplates. Starting a little like she remembered something, she takes a band-aid out of her pocket and asks for your hand with a gesture. Your cut has stopped bleeding, but it’s wider and uglier than hers; she wraps it in the small bandage then kisses it again. “You know I love you, right?”

 _“God, I hate you,”_ you remember her biting in the house. Rather than reply verbally, you let your forehead sink onto her shoulder. Her fingers reach up to play with the hair on the nape of your neck.

“After the tea’s done, I’m going to give you a backrub with lavender oil, okay?” She kisses the crown of your head. Fef has always preferred natural remedies like herbs—lavender helps bad anxiety problems, she’d told you in high school—but she wants to be careful with you. She’s still learning how to be careful.

“That _thing’s_ presence is gone now, right?” you ask in a small voice.

“Not exactly,” says a pleasant voice to your right.

You flinch and jerk back. Fef just stares. The whistle of the tea kettle starts in the kitchen.

The dead girl is sitting in the armchair next to the couch, her legs crossed at the knee and hands in her lap. One of her nails—or claws, you realize jarringly—taps on her gray knuckle. Her jet-black hair stops at her chin, dark orange horns no longer cracked but still curling around the back of her head towards her neck. Her eyes are not dead: they’re a startling violet, matching the slight flush of two small fins adorning either side of her face where her ears should be.

Fef and you just gaze at her in horrified silence as the kettle whistles on. Inclining her head toward the kitchen, the thing says, “Someone better get that.”

“I cleansed you,” Fef says. Her voice is hard.

The girl smiles, black lips tight. You can see a flash of sharp teeth as she speaks. “You cleansed your _fear_ of me. That’s good, because you don’t _need_ to fear me. I would never harm any of my chosen.”

“What the fuck are you?” you snarl before you can realize that’s a terrible idea.

But the girl just laughs. It’s high and tinkling and mocking, and a chord in your head chimes _God, God, God_ , just like it did when you first saw the picture.

With a grin that actually exposes her shark-like teeth, she says, “My name is Rose, and I need your help.”

 

* * *

 

“An eternity ago,” Rose says, sipping her tea, “there was a game my friends and I played at the end of the universe that should have made us gods.”

After a hushed, near-panicked conversation in the kitchen about their new visitor, Fef had decided to treat this demon like a houseguest. _That’s crazy_ , you’d told her, on the verge of another breakdown, _this is crazy_. This thing had been messing with your sleep, with your dreams. Sure, you’d been kind of fixated on that old mansion ever since you started urban exploring, but it was like ever since you’d gone in, the nightmares you used to have about suffocating in the walls had come back in full-force. It’d been over a month. You should be over it by now.

“When we were in Savannah,” Fef whispered, because she doesn’t call it _that house_ like you do, she just says the city since she knows you’ll understand, “there were two presences there. One seemed neutral, like a watcher. The other was bubbly and demonic and _gross_. I don’t think that one is currently in our living room.”

So instead of two cups of earl grey, Fef had fixed three, and now you’re back on the couch, your mug held in both hands so you don’t drop it.

Rose continues, “It was a long and arduous journey, but we made it to the end, and our prize was a new universe. Alternia was war-torn and terrible so we said _no more_ , we said _, let’s create something beautiful,_ and then something went wrong as we stepped to the door. I felt doom. We could see our prize on the other side of a great barrier, and nothing we could do could take us through. We were trapped in blackness and whispers until Jade realized that there must be _symmetry_.”

“What sort of symmetry?” you ask. You were always rubbish at math, but you’re a half-decent artist.

“Temporal,” Rose replies. “You see, it was always meant to be us, in some capacity. We lost half of our group along the way, but the eight of us we started it were meant to win in another timeline, as humans.”

“So this,” Fef waves a hand along Rose’s form, “didn’t happen after. You were never human.” She sounds deeply intrigued, not a trace of nervousness in her tone. You wish you had her bravery. Anxiety has rooted its claws into your stomach.

She laughs a little. “No, not in this timeline. We were a species called trolls, and now we are nothing. What doomed us is we were not supposed to be trolls; we, at our cores, are _human_. That fucked us up. We were never meant to win this iteration of the game, nor claim its prize, but the new universe was created anyway, and you inhabit it.”

“This is all a bit far-fetched,” you say, trying to be pragmatic as if your palms aren’t sweating like you’re in the desert.

“It only gets more unbelievable,” Rose says knowingly. You scowl, not liking it when someone else feels smug around you.

“So if you were trapped with your friends,” Fef says, “how did you get through? The summoning circle in Savannah?”

“Yes,” Rose confirms, leaning back in the chair. “You are two of my chosen, and I’ll get back to why later, but there are three of you total. I had Kanaya come down to that house—it’s one of the few points where the walls between this universe and the Furthest Ring are the thinnest, as it’s one of the pores in the frog ( _what the fuck?_ you think)—through visiting her in dreams. As someone who is space-attuned, I could access her mind and no one else’s, besides… well, we can go back to that. It took a long time for me to convince her this was all real, and she got into that house with a chainsaw and went to the attic, where she performed a summoning ritual.”

Goosebumps have broken out on your arms and down your neck. Fef is leaning forward, completely enraptured. “But you weren’t the only thing to come through,” she says, understanding.

Rose shakes her head. “I also brought a horrorterror. That’s what attacked you in the house. I was still gaining my strength in the water when you first came upon me—I had to play the rain—but by the time the horrorterror sensed your presence, I could banish it.” Her expression becomes a bit less serene, but you see her steel herself. “And banish it I did. I closed the portal before anymore could come through, and I paid a visit to Kanaya after you fled from my rather polite knocking.”

“Why would you close the portal before your friends could come through?” Fef asks. You feel the room drop a degree colder. “Wouldn’t you want to come into this world together? And why could you come through now and not any other time?”

“Fef,” you say warningly. Surprisingly, your voice doesn’t shake.

Rose has started to change. Her skin looks like black ink is leaking into it, swirling and curling; her eyes are lightening to a pure white, only the pupil remaining black. You and Fef watch in scared, sacred silence as she changes, hair turning white and heat emulating from her. Before you can tell Fef to _run_ , Rose speaks. “I made a sacrifice for them.” Her voice is more booming, with an echoing quality to it that makes her seem ancient. “I will dissolve. I will break. But I needed to guide you, all twelve of you. I could wait no longer. They need to be reborn.”

A vase on the umbrella stand near the front door shatters. You shoot to your feet, Fef a beat behind you. You’re scared, but invigorated. “Stop going on a fanciful power-trip, you utter fucking _charlatan_ ,” you snarl. “Oh, you made a sacrifice for your friends and now you’re a horrorterror, boo-fucking-hoo! _Maybe_ we’ll help so it’s not for nothing, but goddamn, show us some fucking manners!”

You snap your mouth shut, teeth clacking with repressed fear. Panic makes a pulse beat in your ears. Fef grabs your arm, like you’ll fall without her support. Rose looks at your for a long moment, tilts her head to the side like she’s pondering something, then vanishes.

 

* * *

 

Rose doesn’t reappear until the summer. She is troll but not Other, and she smiles at you sadly. “Kanaya has been making preparations,” she says. “It’s time to save my friends.”


	4. The Bard of Rage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gamzee Makara has been in the loop much, much longer than anyone else.

It was a long time coming, when your very best friend called you up and said it was time to take a little vacation.

You met him after thirteen years of living in a new country every year, seeing the spectacular sights of places like Warsaw and Brisbane and Abu Dhabi. Before you believed in true magic—the kind that gets under your skin and whispers you the secrets of the universe—you believed magic was found in language. It took a mere three weeks to pick up conversational Italian, easier because you already knew Spanish and French and English and German, so you could build onto your temple of words and communicate with the world.

Karkat came into your life during your fourth week of Italian, in a place called Ortobello, and for the first time since you started breathing, you thought you had a home. Of course you had to leave him after eight months; your daddy was high up in the US military, and that made it so you moved around a lot. Before, you’d felt blessed to be able to see so much of the world at such a young age.

But then, you’d just felt lost.

So when your daddy told you that you were supposed to go to some old citadel at the glorious age of eighteen, you shook your head and said nah, then boarded a plane back to Italy.

Karkat was not waiting for you. He didn’t wait for anyone, except maybe the beautiful boy built like a bull that walked on pretty metal legs. He still took you back, even with your extra height that tried to dwarf him and the couple more inches on your ‘fro and your perpetual slouch. Your best friend brought you on adventures that the stubborn little thing called Tavros couldn’t go on, and when you broke into stone inns abandoned in the countryside and old cathedrals that still smelled of something holy, you found out that magic was real.

Your best bro didn’t believe you. Karkat Vantas was pragmatic, skeptical, incredulous. But that same night, when Karkat was gone and you and Tavbro were chillin’ high up on a balcony, he told you a story of the fairies that used to live in his nonna’s garden, who’d play with him and tell him stories when he didn’t have much to do except sit in his big-wheeled chair. You tell him that the fairies sound more magic than anything you’ve ever damn well heard before, because yours is sporadic and in touch with God while his sounds pure.

It didn’t matter to you that Karkat was the only one of your little group who could not admit to the existence of something beauteous and Other. He didn’t need to know you spoke the truth. You knew enough of the old gods to protect him.

So when you felt the hiss of those gods in your bones and in your dreams, you gave yourself up. You gave the God of Breath your eyes, to watch over his people. The Goddess of Space got your hands, because they were tools of creation and there was no better present for someone who only wished to make. The God of Time got your heart and control over its thumping beat and whimsical wants.

And for the Goddess of Light, you left your mind for her to sharpen and root about in however she pleased. She saw your love of languages and blessed you, so the six you’d learned to speak became two hundred. The other gods didn’t have time for such blessings, but she thought you could make good use of it.

“Speak of everything but us,” she told you one night, her small corporeal frame sitting cross-legged on your chest as you laid in bed. You were dreaming, technically, but you felt so awake. She leaned forward, putting a finger to your lips and smiling. Her eyes were white to contrast the pitch blackness of her lips and the ashy gray of her skin, and she smiled like you were sharing a secret. “Except to the others you know are meant to save us.”

“How will I up an’ know who’s worthy of bein’ your saviors?” you asked.

Her fingers had trailed to your heart. “Dave will tell you,” she said, a hint of dark humor in her voice. “You will have to listen hard. He is a fan of irony.”

The next night another girl God hung from your ceiling fan, her black hair with bits of starlight woven in hanging to tickle your nose as her glasses slid down her face. Her horns were a little concave and pointed up, like the ears of a wolf that are perked, listening to the howls of its packmates. “Why was she here last night?” she sighed petulantly. “She knows you’re _mine_.”

You cocked your head to the side. “I’m not meanin’ to be contrary, oh Lady of Frost and Frogs,” you said, “but I gave myself to all a’ you, when I did my dearest devotion.”

“And I appreciate that, I really do!” she said flippantly. She drew their symbol upside-down on your forehead with her thumb: a strange little house, made of uneven squares and lopsided triangles. It matched the tattoo you have between your shoulder blades. “I just thought she’d have enough to deal with back in the States.” Dipping down to run her fingers through your kinky hair, she continued, “She talked to you much better than she did to the other two of Hers, though. She scared them half to death!”

“I bet she’ll do better on the last one,” you said. You knew that the Lady of Light and Rain had already made contact with her first chosen a long, long time ago, but you knew this was a secret and if her brothers and sisters really wanted to know, they could easily find out. You think that to some fine capacity, the rest of them are a bit afraid of Her Grimdarkness. “I have faith in her. In all ‘a you.”

She’s already gone by the time you hear her, “Of course you do! You’re Gamzee Makara!”

That you are.

Once she was gone, you realized that the Lord of Heat and Clockwork had already told you who to trust, years and years ago, and He’d already led you to where you were meant to go.

“How many of us are meetin’?” you ask Karkat as you scratch the back of your neck, just to be sure. Your English is perfect, since it was your first language, but your best friend wanted to practice speaking it out loud for when he finally gets to the US.

“Twelve total,” he says, looking up at you with eyes the color of mud. “We’ve got us three from here, and I invited Kanaya because she lives close enough to Eridan and Feferi that it would definitely be worth it for her to make the drive. Fuck, was that right? Or is it, um… for her to drive to… You know what? I don’t care. Then there’s Nepeta and her two lackeys coming in from South Korea, plus Aradia and her asshole boyfriend and that psychotic basket case they like to hang around with making the trip from Japan.”

Ah, yeah. That’s it. That’s everyone.

“Eridan offered to pay our airfare,” he says as he clicks away on some boring website full of prices and planes, “but I said you could foot the bill for Tavros and I.”

He looks back at you, firm but a bit nervous, ‘cause that’s a lot of money. You just shrug, just like he thought you would, and say, “Yeah, I got it.” You don’t add that it’s actually ‘ _Tavros and me’_ , because even if you used to worship language like a god, you don’t feel a need to patrol another bro’s grammar when you still know what he up an’ wants to say.

You wait until summer, when you can take time off of work and school and converge for you conclave of saviors. The Goddess of Space leaves you a frog on your suitcase as a parting gift, and you carefully scoop it up and leave it in the little courtyard behind your apartment.

 _It won’t be long now_ , you think. _Here it motherfuckin’ comes._

Weird vibes come from the two that pick you up at the airport. Your little miracle bro whines about jetlag as a beanpole in a flannel shirt and gawky hipster shades picks him up like he’s plucking a kid out of a cabbage patch. Karkat starts hissing like a cat and curses rapidly in his native language, “Mettimi giù, mettimi giù! _Fuck_ , Eridan!” The message doesn’t come across.

“I love your hair!” the American’s lover exclaims, grinning, and even though she does not belong to Space, you still feel like you can see starlight in her own locks.

Her brown hands knot together in glee— _she delights in guests_ , a voice rumbles within you, perceptive—and you laugh, deep and warm. “Yours is as long as a river, sis,” you comment, looking at how it glides to her hips like a wavy waterfall, and you can imagine it braided and full of wildflowers.

She grabs for one of your suitcases just as Eridan takes Tavros’ duffel bag and snatches Karbro’s suitcase like he’s pickpocketing it away, and when Karkat snarls at him, he just smirks and goes on his merry way. Your best friend goes to catch up with him, and the rest of you begin to follow more slowly; Feferi stays back with you. Her aura reeks of summoning, and you wonder what she and the adventurous Japanese girl are gonna get up to tonight.

When the hipster dweeb is done preening and you’re all done loading up his fancy car, you wind your arm around his scrawny shoulders and tug him towards the driver’s door. “It’s been a while since I set foot on this soil,” you say to him. The waif starts an amicable conversation with Karkat as her lesser half tenses under your arm. You think he smells the God in your pits. “Tell me whatever the fuck I missed.”

You already know what hasn’t changed—the air still stinks of sin.

The Goddess of Light is reading a magazine by the curbside check-in as Eridan chatters on about politics, wearing human skin and a deep purple dress. Her smile has too many pointed teeth. She does not approach, looking away once Fef notices. The flower child perches with a syllable on her lips that looks like _wait_ , but then something in her expression flickers and she returns her attention to Tavros.

“So you really believe in fairies?” she asks.

He seems sheepish, but when you glance back at him and grin, you see his confidence build. You think he likes not being the craziest one in the room sometimes. “Yeah, I do.”

“Magic is fuckin’ everywhere you look, sis,” you tell her.

“I know,” she says, grinning. Without losing any of her cheer, she adds, “And not all of it is nice.”


	5. Convergence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here they come.

Gamzee, Karkat, and Tavros were the first to arrive, and within the next twenty-four hours, everyone else trickles in as well; Eridan and Feferi make a lot of trips to get their guests, but it’s not a big deal, even though Eridan complains loudly about it. Their townhouse is about fifteen minutes from the airport, so they’ve only lost about an hour and a half to driving today. Seeing as they probably would’ve just been lounging around and weren’t using that time for anything particularly productive, it didn’t put as much of a damper on their day as Eridan said it did.

Feferi was so happy to have guests. She loved to entertain—she’d helped her mother plan bustling parties and fundraisers since she was a small child—and she hadn’t had the opportunity to in a while, since being in college made it so she rarely had any substantial free time until the summer. She and Eridan were soon to enter their senior year of college, and this meant that the three summers before, they had internships and study abroad opportunities to keep them substantially busy and build their resumes ever further, to supplement their rich upbringings and Yale educations. This summer, however, they’d both been able to convince their parents that travelling was best for them, to see more of the world, even though Eridan’s father grumbled that they needed to stop trespassing everywhere and his mother warned him not to fall through any more ceilings.

The townhouse the rich kids shared was a beautiful brownstone (or brownstone-styled; the place was very new), with wrought-iron railings leading up their porch stairs and encasing their flowing garden. Aradia recognized some of the herbs growing there on her way in, and this led to an intense discussion between her and Feferi about all of their different uses of herbs, even—

“I’ve been trying to use a combination of lavender and chamomile for Eridan’s anxiety disorder, but they just—”

Eridan overhears and sharply says, “Fef!” He’s never really gotten used to her oversharing.

None of the other conversations in the room pick up the bit of tension, and Aradia laughs it off, changing the subject back to ritualistic herbs. Feferi looks guilty as Eridan slinks to the other side of the room.

“So when are we doing this?” Vriska says, already seeming bored.

“Jesus fuck, let us sleep off the jetlag first, alright?” Karkat snaps at her. She just shrugs her shoulders languidly, and within an hour, the group has disbanded. Gamzee paid for a nice suite a mile down the road for his Italian group; Equius footed the bill for a slightly more common hotel two blocks south for himself, Nepeta, and (more begrudgingly) Nepeta’s girlfriend, Terezi; Aradia, her boyfriend Sollux, and Vriska were all going to stay at the townhouse.

There’s definitely enough space for them; they even have a guest bedroom that used to be Eridan’s, when they’d first moved in together freshman year and their parents had required it. They could rent out the downstairs bedroom to another person or couple now that they permanently shared a bedroom, but they might as well keep the space entirely to themselves, since the higher rent didn’t matter. They were already paying a fortune to attend Yale; why would one more bedroom make a difference?

Aradia and Sollux make Vriska take the couch, which was _also_ incredibly comfortable. Seeing as she’d been sitting on it all evening, she didn’t carp as loudly about the arrangement as she normally would have. In the morning, the only complaint she’d had is that she felt like someone was watching her sleep.

“I bet it was you, Ampora,” she says over a cup of coffee as they all drink and wait for everyone else to taxi, uber, or walk over. “You’ve always been creepy, even when you were thirteen.”

Eridan’s cheeks are hot, burning red. “What I did on an RP chatboard when I was thirteen is definitely not of importance now—”

“It was probably Rose, anyway,” Feferi adds cheerfully, putting on a tea kettle for the rest of the guests.

“ _What_?”

The conversation is halted by the doorbell. Everyone else arrived.

After everyone had their coffee, tea, and breakfast, Kanaya gets Eridan and Feferi away from the rest of the group. Eridan is petulant about it, saying that they better not destroy their furniture while they were gone.

Kanaya cuts right through his moping. “Did you find the location we discussed?”

“Yep!” Feferi responds. She’s grateful that Kanaya had arrived, so now they had three cars rather than two. It’d be much easier to split up that way. “I just wish we could go down to Georgia; it’d be so much easier there.”

“Though Fall River isn’t a pore,” Kanaya says, leaning on the kitchen counter, “I think that part of the skin is still weak enough that they should be able to poke through with minimal damage.”

“‘Poke through?’” Eridan repeats, then shakes his head a little. It hardly jostles his heavily-styled hair, but his glasses slide down his long, freckled nose. “This is still so weird.”

There’s a note of fear in his tone that Feferi picks up on; she’s used to it by now. “Are you sure--?”

“Yes,” Eridan says, voice firm. It leaves no room for further discussion, and Kanaya assumes from the air that they’ve already had this argument. Numerous times.

“I scoped out the warehouse the best I could,” Kanaya says, pulling a tablet from her purse, and they go over the aerial shots, the property history, the security measures. There wasn’t any history of hauntings, but Fall River was considered a haunted town by some; it was nothing compared to Savannah, but that was hard to beat, being a “pore” and all.

By noon, they’ve stocked up on supplies and are on the road. Eridan cajoles Karkat, Nepeta, and Aradia into riding with him—“it’ll be the first official time we hang out in person, come on, we’ll have fun”—and it turns out to be very awkward at first, until Karkat starts making jokes at everyone’s (including his own) expense and the air lightens. Now, they aren’t driving over two hours away to summon gods. They’re good friends on a road trip who are reuniting in real life (or this little piece of Earth that _they_ consider real) for the first time. They talk about Terrestrial Trolling. They talk about photography. They talk about ghosts and rituals and—

“Do you think bullshit this is real?” Karkat asks, a tad incredulous.

“I didn’t almost re-break my ankle for nothing,” Eridan declares, melodramatic as always. “Oh, and there’s the fact that a grimdark god sometimes pops up in our apartment and starts making claims about how she’s _dating Kanaya_.”

“How would you even date a god?” Nepeta questions. She sounds completely enthralled by the process. By the end of the day, Eridan bets that she’ll have added a whole slew of eldritch horrorterrors to her shipping wall, inspired by the intrepid romance between Kanaya and Rose. Eridan wonders what monster he’d romance; maybe in Nepeta’s mind he’d get to have a threesome with Fef and Cthulhu.

…Maybe Vriska was right, Eridan _is_ creepy.

They all arrive at the abandoned warehouse at about the same time, pulling around and parking where they couldn’t be seen from the road. Daylight made the ritual safer for them, but still not completely safe—they still had to reach across horrorterror-inhabited space in order to reach the gods’ barrier. Aradia assured them that she was a good enough medium to protect them all; though many were dubious and Vriska almost started a fistfight over it, they still broke into the warehouse with little hindrance and began the setup.

Surprisingly, the blood wasn’t the hardest part to acquire. Karkat knew a lot about the uses of different sorts of blood, and he was very cagey about where he got that information, so no one really pushed. Human would work best, and while some were willing to slice themselves open to do this, not everyone was so willing and they would’ve needed every drop to do something so complicated, so instead they managed to get some sheep’s blood. “A good, solid choice,” Aradia praised as Karkat relayed his decision to Gamzee, then had him restate it in English. They were at an herb shop just outside of New Haven, and Aradia was on the phone with Feferi so she’d have a second opinion. This was the kind of herb shop that also had rocks of different kinds, and Eridan watched Nepeta disappear over there. There was an even _better_ rock shop that Kanaya’s car had gone to, and they were getting the main stuff: schorl for the base, a few hunks of sodalite, selenite because Kanaya demanded it, and iolite just in case this Furthest Ring Rose had talked about was astral. Nepeta comes to the counter with a big chunk of moldavite for the grounding center. Eridan couldn’t help but wonder aloud how a team of scientifically-minded individuals had become occultists all of a sudden. Aradia, who’d always been inclined, said that once you’d met a god, you couldn’t discount miracles as poppycock, and so the occult had credibility. Eridan didn’t quite follow her logic, but she got this creepy look in her eye that made him slink back to Karkat.

Common chicory and dittany of Crete (the latter of which was very expensive, so Eridan had to pay) were the two herbs they decided on, but they also decided to grab some sage, because why the hell not? Sage is a good herb for pretty much anything, or so Fef said. Eridan grabbed it almost on reflex as Aradia watched approvingly. They’d make an occultist out of him yet.

At the warehouse, the large windows near the ceiling bathe square sections of the floor in sunlight, every dust particle in the stream visible. Kanaya throws out directions as the ritual is set up, looking nervous but confident simultaneously. She knows Rose best. If anyone was going to be able to summon her friends, it would be Kanaya.

They paint the strange house effigy that the Terrestrial Trolling crew had seen all over the world. Around it are two circles, containing runes; some of them are recognized as the Zodiac symbols, and some are completely unfamiliar. Though this reminds Eridan and Feferi of their time in Savannah and makes Eridan’s ears ring with anticipation, the circle is not encased by tendrils that look like a sun. It is split into thirds, one containing waves, another arcs that sweeps outward, and the final trapezoids that make it appear gear-like on that side. “And now,” Kanaya directs once it was all drawn out, rocks in specific places and herbs beginning to burn in the middle, “we sit. There’s an order,” she says quickly before everyone can descend. “Aradia, here. Tavros, come next to her. Now, Sollux…”

She goes on. Aradia, Tavros, Sollux, Karkat, Nepeta, Kanaya, Terezi, Vriska, Equius, Gamzee, Eridan, Feferi. Twelve souls, twelve humans. (Twelve trolls.) One circle, all symmetry.

“ _Now_ we sit,” Kanaya says, and descends gracefully. They all link hands and stare at Kanaya, waiting for her next instruction.

All at once, the light coming in from the windows goes out. It might as well be nighttime outside, but Sollux can see on his digital watch that it’s still three-thirty in the afternoon. The only light comes from the blue and red lettering on his watch and the burning bowl of herbs in the center.

“John.” Kanaya speaks clearly. “Jade. Dave.”

They are mundane names, but here they have power. Essences begin to appear, just as smoke at first, but then they begin to take corporeal form. They are certainly not solid, floating there in the center, not like Rose was, but there is no denying that people are here.

“Gamzee, you motherfucker!” the girl exclaims. Her laughter is happy and sad and elated all at once.

No one was expecting that except, perhaps, Gamzee, who grins and laughs as well. “I up an’ fuckin’ told y’all. I did say we could make somethin’ here.”

“Close, but not close enough,” the one wearing dark sunglasses says, his face a mask. “You might’ve pulled our souls through, bro, but our bodies are way back out in Paradox Space, and I don’t fancy a trip back there now that…”

“Now that we’re _here_ ,” the final one says earnestly, wistfully. These troll gods do not look powerful. They look like children. “Where’s Rose?”

“She will be able to join you once this is done. I know we could not bring your bodies through, but this is the only way, due to your current situation,” Kanaya says. Only Feferi catches the slight tremor in her tone. “Do you understand what this means?”

John and Jade just look at each other and shrug. Jade says, “We’re tourists?” as John exclaims, “We’re on a vacation!” They realize how close each other’s guesses were, and they high-five.

Dave nods his head slightly. “You’re trying to force a reincarnation cycle.”

Ten heads in a circle just stare. The two belonging to Gamzee and Kanaya nod.

“Not without Rose,” the three gods say simultaneously.

“Rose will be there with you, even if she isn’t now,” Kanaya says _. It’s so forced_ , thinks Feferi. “I was able to help her cross over on my own, but now that we’ve done the actual ritual and all of you are here, when the circle breaks, your souls will dissipate and be reborn.”

John and Jade smile and are able to nudge Dave into it as well, because even though this isn’t really their prize, it is a second chance at life in a universe that will never have an iteration of the Game to destroy it.

“Are you ready?” Gamzee says in his slow, measured way.

Jade grabs John and Dave’s hands, and they all nod. “We’re free,” Jade laughs.

Kanaya lets go of Terezi and Nepeta’s hands.

That is all it takes to break the circle. The burning herbs in the center are extinguished; the windows are once again allowed to let light stream in. Sollux looks at his watch; even though it had been at least five minutes since the lights went out, his watch had not changed, not even to the second.

There is a beat of silence, then cacophony. Only Kanaya and Gamzee had known what to expect from the ritual, and now there are questions from all sides, some excited, some curious, some terrified. Above it all, Karkat yells, “WHY US?”

The quiet returns. Gamzee smiles knowingly, because he remembered the first time he felt home, then gestured for Kanaya to say her piece.

“They talked about the game they played,” Kanaya says, “that made them gods. And they were not human.”

“They were trolls,” Eridan interrupts, so everyone else thinks he’s in on it too. No one is fooled.

“Yes, they were trolls in the _doomed_ timeline. But they were humans in the true one, just as we were _trolls_.”

The first person to offer any response to that is Equius. “This… this is preposterous. So we are in this ‘doomed timeline’,” he sounds snide, “and we are aliens.”

“And in the true universe,” Kanaya continues, hands folded in her lap, “we played the game.”

(Rose had taken Kanaya’s head in her hands and made her summon the memories: Alternia, the game, the pesterlogs between species, the meteor. Kanaya found it was hard to look this Eridan in the eye sometimes, whenever he was being particularly difficult, because they murdered each other in another life. He killed Feferi, too. It all hurts, because even though Kanaya had only just met Eridan and Feferi in life, they had both been good friends to her since they were all in high school. And Eridan _killed_ her, without a second glace. Not this Eridan, Kanaya often has to tell herself. Vriska was a murderer, too. And Gamzee. And if they counted the bad guys and not each other, weren’t they _all_ murderers, children fighting a war and playing a game to win a universe that they couldn’t even _remember_ —)

No one asks, _Did we win?_ surprisingly enough. The only question is asked by Vriska:

“Will we have to play it here?”

Kanaya’s answer to this is firmer than any other so far.

“No.”

 

* * *

 

Nepeta and Equius gather the leftover rocks and Karkat throws the some of the pig’s blood onto the symbol, so it’s closed and no horrorterrors can make it out, and slowly, the group trudges out of the warehouse and to the cars so they can go back to the townhouse. Four hours later, everyone who wanted to has showered and a copious amount of alcohol has been purchased. The day to remember turned into a night to forget.

It’s Feferi who notices that Kanaya is gone. She finds Eridan, who’s sitting on the arm of the couch and sipping on craft beer, watching Aradia and Vriska yell at each other in Japanese over a game of Pictionary. Though some players were worried that others would cheat by communicating in their native languages, Gamzee was there to moderate, seeing as he understood every language and could make sure the rules weren’t being broken.

(Would he tattle, though? That’s a different story.)

When Feferi approaches Eridan and whispers, “Have you seen Kanaya?” in his ear, he recoils, almost dropping his beer in surprise. “Sorry,” she apologizes. He’s only becoming more and more skittish.

“Can’t say I have,” he says, adopting her tone.

“I’m worried about her,” Feferi says.

Sighing, Eridan heaves himself off the couch and helps Feferi look for Kanaya. She doesn’t know why she thinks Kanaya is in any trouble. If anything, they’d just made the world safer by getting the gods out of limbo and making sure they’d meet again, here and whole.

Feferi just remembers how _sad_ Kanaya had looked.

She and Eridan manage to find Kanaya alone in the kitchen, leaning on the island and fingering the expensive tiled counter, very present. She hadn’t run away, hadn’t abandoned them all. The older girl is sipping on a bloody Mary because Fef made a whole pitcher of it (she basked in her wonderful sense of humor), eyes to the floor and away from everyone else.

“Where’s Rose?” Eridan demands immediately, because he has absolutely no tact.

“I don’t know,” Kanaya responds, voice quiet. It’s very obvious to Feferi that Kanaya lied to the other gods when she told them Rose would reincarnate with them.

(Then were they really even gods? If they couldn’t even detect a mortal girl’s lie?)

Eridan’s lips purse like he’s readying for a fight, so Feferi intercedes, “We just want to help her, Kanaya. You said she would be in the reincarnation cycle, but I don’t think you were _sure_.”

There’s a long silence in which Kanaya draws a deep, shuddering breath. _This was supposed to be over,_ Eridan thinks, blood pumping through him at a breakneck pace. He wondered if all this god-nonsense would drive him to an early grave or insanity first. Maybe he _should_ go back to therapy.

(But they’d never, _ever_ believe him, he’d probably just get an even _worse_ diagnosis—)

Kanaya finally lifts her gaze and looks at Eridan, and then Feferi. “After everyone leaves, I would truly appreciate it if the two of you would come to Savannah with me. You’re right. She… She’s gone. Rose gave up being in the cycle with the rest of them. And I think we might be able to fix it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the end! I hope you enjoyed whatever the hell I decided to do with this installment (I wrote about 2000 words of it almost a year ago and the remaining 6000 today, so _I_ don't even know what's going on with it). This universe is open to ficlet prompts at sonicsymphony.tumblr.com, and if you have any questions about the 'verse, feel free to ask those too!


	6. Godspeed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested listening music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9USJgkruTw
> 
> I had no intention of finishing this in the near future but when I heard this song, I couldn't help but return here.

It is cold where you are. You don’t know how long you’ve been here. You can only judge time by the vessels you send out into the world, and they are transient, fickle things that find pores to pour from and devour any knowledge you seek.

How did you get here? Was there anything before this? What are the gaps of color you sometimes see? You reach out, trying to grasp and releasing something horrible and terrifying instead.

You didn’t mean to, but you cannot find it within yourself to be upset. You are only tired and curious.

Are those emotions your name? They are the only things you can identify about yourself, but they cannot be it. You do have a name, you believe during the moments when your presence is clear enough to muster a thought. Sometimes you can taste it on a nonexistent tongue, but it flits away before it can form.

Will it ever form?

 

* * *

 

It is the very end of summer when Eridan and Feferi meet with Kanaya. The cicadas still scream in Savannah and the air is thick enough to swim in; this does not vary from one day to the next, except for when they visit the house in the woods that first told them of the game and the gods. Though the air still feels like water, the cicadas are silent.

When they first scope out the house the morning of Kanaya’s flight, it is locked up, standing as if it hasn’t been disturbed in hundreds of years.

When they return at sunset with Kanaya in tow, the door is open.

“She knows I’m here,” Kanaya says with a note of desperation that has Eridan and Feferi looking at each other nervously. Eridan has the intense desire to stay in the car and wait this whole thing out, and while he has no qualms with sending Kanaya in alone to meet her fate, he can’t in good conscience send Fef in with her. Who else would put up with him?

Feferi is brimming with interest despite her trepidation. She would not even be wary if not for the last several times she tried to reach Rose through summoning. She tried scrying bowls and the porcelain cracked. She tried mirrors and they shattered. She tried the cool surface of a lake on a windless day, because it was something that could not be smashed in her hands, but every night since she has had horrors in her dreams. Monsters, formless dark, grabbing hands that did not feel human; every night it feels as if part of her is being sucked away. In her search to find Rose, what did she let in?

(Eridan doesn’t know the specifics, but he knows something is amiss. She doesn’t get nervous like this before regular rituals. She normally has no problems with sleep. Multiple times, he’s woken up to her leaning out their open bedroom window on the second floor, face bared to the night. The rigidity of her unnerves him. _Fef, come back to bed,_ he always requests hesitantly, and she flinches and turns and he keeps a grip around her waist for the rest of the night.)

When the three of them enter the threshold of the house, there is a black stain on the floor that drains into the wood. It’s a violent splatter of something long dried away, and Eridan thinks of what chased them through the house before. Kanaya eyes it while her hand slides over the long knife at her hip, her thoughts far away.

The last time she was here, Kanaya was in the attic. Rose had told her while she slept that Kanaya couldn’t let anyone know that she was here that day. No one could know that it was Kanaya who opened the door between Rose’s world and this one, performing a ritual out of trust and a hesitant love that now tasted like grit in her mouth. Yes, she had gotten Rose through just long enough to allow the other three gods passage to reincarnation, but at what cost?

One of the costs was right in front of her: the miasmic remains of the horrorterror on the floor.

If she can let Rose find peace, the scourge will be worth it.

Fef remembers the way to the infinite hall. She leads them there, flashlight in hand, and does not hesitate to walk into the black even when she hears Eridan’s footfalls pause behind her. He jogs a few steps to catch up and stays close to her back as they pass door after door after door after door after…

 

* * *

 

“Time is a circle,” some say when they wish to be profound but lack your understanding. _No,_ you want to reply. _Time is a sphere._

Universes upon universes overlapping, small ones and large ones and light ones and dense ones combining into a whole that even you cannot fathom in all of your godhood.

Hell, you can’t fathom _anything_ here. You wonder what godhood is if you cannot stay still, if you cannot reform, if _she_ cannot hear you—

But it has to be worth it. In the periods where your clarity is greater, you think of those you saved by dipping your hands into the dripping dark unknown. The grimdarkness you managed to hold at bay for years as you trained and fought and died and rose again—

 _Rose again._ You want to be Rose again.

 

* * *

 

They are not sure how long they walk. The rest of the house has long disappeared behind them, the only light coming from Feferi’s flashlight at the front and Kanaya’s at the back. Eridan is sandwiched between the two girls as they walk single-file, Kanaya’s steps becoming heavier the farther they trek.

Eridan wishes they wouldn’t be so quiet; he misses Fef’s chatter, but this air seems too silent to disturb. He doesn’t notice when the doors stop appearing and it’s just faded walls around them, but he doesn’t want to ask when it happened. He can hopefully find out later, once this is over. Checking his watch—as he’s done many times so far—he sees that none of the hands have yet to move from the position they were in once they came into the house. Eridan hates this and if the watch wasn’t a Rolex, he would have chucked it a long time ago. For now, he takes it off and slips it into his pocket.

The hall doesn’t end at a door.  The flashlight beams get shorter and shorter until they hit solid black, making a circle on the dark. Eridan has been sweating for an eternity, but now he feels it cold on the back of his neck.

 

* * *

 

There is a metaphor that your omniscience provides, even when it won’t tell you anything about yourself. In many literary works, the rain a symbol for rebirth. People go to the waves to be cleansed. Thundershowers bring spring. Water is everywhere in some form, except for where you are now, but you can still appreciate the idea of rain being linked with reincarnation. It feels important.

Didn’t someone once tell you to play the rain?

* * *

 

“You’ll both need to act as a tether,” Kanaya says, coming to stand at the front of the group, between the couple and the strange dark wall. “My body needs to go completely inside. Feferi can take my hand and place her arm into the void with me. Eridan, hold onto her and make sure we don’t get yanked in.”

Eridan is nauseated. He nods.

“Be careful,” Fef warns. A headache that’s been building throbs at her temples. “Liminal spaces can be pretty techy.”

Kanaya snorts lightly. “There is hardly transformation where there is nothing.”

“There isn’t nothing if Rose is there,” she counters.

Feferi is certain they will find Rose. Kanaya hopes so deeply that her stomach hurts, and she tries to harness that hope and let it seep into her soul. Holding her hand out, Feferi takes Kanaya’s tightly, then reaches out with her other arm to grab Eridan’s waist. He anchors her, planting his feet firmly and wrapping his arm around her in return. He goes to brace his other hand on the wall but thinks better of it, retracting it and wrapping his fingers around his own wrist so Fef is caught in his arms. Without fanfare, Kanaya steps into the dark.

Kanaya’s eyes are open, but she sees only black, like her eyes are tightly closed in a dark room. She can feel Feferi’s grip on her wrist even though she can’t see and despite the other girl’s hold on her, Kanaya can walk freely from the gateway, her footsteps falling on nothing. There is heat on her arm where Feferi’s hand remains.

She cannot call out. Rose and Kanaya had almost a decade of talking to each other through dreams, and in that time, Rose had told Kanaya everything she knew about the world outside of Kanaya’s own. She was not sure if this was technically Paradox Space or somewhere empty outside of the Medium, but she knew if she made too much noise, it wouldn’t take long for horrorterrors to find them; on their turf, they needed no summoning, just an idea.

No, don’t even think the word; they would come. Instead, Kanaya thought of Rose. She thought about how smooth her skin was, about the unique violet of her eyes, about the small ridge of fins along her ears, about her horns that swooped back across her short, straight hair. Rose was different, alien, but Kanaya could picture her as clearly as any human she loved. Even in dreams, Rose felt solid. Her hands were delightfully cool and Kanaya remembered how Rose’s breath felt on her face as she laughed after a kiss that went on for a little too long. The memory of her was strong—stronger than any other thought in her head.

This was dangerous. Feferi’s warm hold was beginning to fade. Kanaya tried to be cognizant of the people grounding her while also focusing singularly on Rose.

Intent matters in the void. Kanaya’s thoughts were pure. It was not long before there was a speck of white in the dark.

~

When four children won a doomed game, it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. After all, who cares about an iteration that is not The One? This reality might as well be a dream.

But it was real to those who lived it. It was real to the gods that were stuck, watching the universe they created flounder in its death throes as it could not manifest the game that could stop it from dissolving into entropy. There was not much time; despite this, you fantasized about giving your friends back the lives the game had stolen from them—different lives, of course, but not worse. You were confident that, no matter where each of them were reborn, they would find each other, like the twelve humans did.

( _Trolls_ , the voice in the void tries to interject. That is incorrect—the four of you were the trolls. The species created were the humans.)

Rose knew that the only twelve people the four gods could just barely see were supposed to play the game, but never would. This was good for them, but bad for the universe. The gods found that if they reached out, they could plant essences of themselves in their mundane lives, nudging things in the right direction, and even interfering with the most pious of the dozen.

It was exhausting. Paradox Space was decaying. Something big was happening in the main timeline, which sent ripples outward. Though Jade and Dave were arguably the best candidates to force them out of this cursed limbo and into the world they created, there was no time or space there, just void. You wonder if it was the horrorterrors who first put the idea in your head that your powers of Light could draw you away.

Through Kanaya, you ripped yourself across to pave the way for your three friends (that seems too small a word for the people that are your everything), and using the influence the twelve humans that were meant to play but never would, John, Dave, and Jade had a place in this world: a destination carved from grimdarkness.

You remember this as you are pulled from the void you slingshoted yourself back into so they would have a chance. There is something warm at your wrist and you look down—it is there! You are corporeal, but it is still so dark. You do not know what grabbed you but it is not a tentacle or ooze; you can feel a pulse in its fingers.

When you find the light, it burns your eyes. Air is harsh on your lungs and you cough.

There is a solid presence in front of you, black leggings and green sheer fabric and brown hands reaching toward you. Her fingers lift your chin, her other thumb swiping at your tears.

You can hardly see her. “Kanaya,” you croak anyway.

Your own hand curling around her wrist is black. You are still a troll, still grimdark—you did not come back across the void like John or Jade or Dave, reincarnated into humans. You remain as you were hatched, with added grimdarkness sitting thick on your shoulders.

Her forehead dips forward, touching yours. You cannot bear to ask her how you two will have to make this work—how you’ll probably have to break of your horns to hide, foraging an identity somehow in the age of information, where every person is recorded. You just know you’ll do anything to stay with her now that you are truly here.

“Hello,” Kanaya says, her tone quiet and warm. “I told you I wouldn’t let you go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If someone had told me I would've been hit with the inspiration to finish Terrestrial Trolling before Insurgency, I would've laughed, but that's how my urges to write in this series have always hit--suddenly and fiercely. This is my weird, experimental series, so I hope anyone who liked this collection got a little bit of closure. The ending for this series was supposed to be its own oneshot, but once I wrote this, I thought it belonged here more than anywhere else. Unless someone prompts something (or asks to see a oneshot I found in this series's folder when I was saving the word doc for this), this is it for Terrestrial Trolling! Thanks for the fun ride. B)


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